Portrait of a Moment
by zestycrouton
Summary: 'Perhaps if she'd never been given reason to dream of anything more, she'd never have known she wanted for it.' Post-ALBW; part of the ongoing 'Timeline' mini-series.


_This marks my... what, seventh entry? I'm really burning through these. Why don't I update as consistently with my multi-chapter stories? Geez._

 _Just a quick note before we start: this one-shot is another entry in my ongoing 'Timeline' mini-series, in which I explore the ways I think Link and Zelda's dynamic plays out after the various games they appear in. This time around we're taking a look at 'A Link Between Worlds'. No, you do not need to have read any of the other stories in this mini-series for this one to make sense, although if you would like to please feel free. At the moment, I have completed entries for Skyward Sword, the Minish Cap, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and two for Ocarina of Time (one in the CT (post-MM) and one in the AT (pre-WW)). You can find them on my profile, obviously._

 _That's it. Do your thing._

* * *

 _ **Timeline**_

 **-A Link Between Worlds-**

 **Portrait of a Moment**

Our subject sits alone in the middle of the floor.

Outside, the moon has reached its zenith. Beams of pure light extend themselves towards her, hauntingly pale and pearlescent, leaking out from the dark unfeeling facades of chilly castle windows, touching down in soft intervals across the age-worn carpet. This light remains our princess's only companion, illuminating the hallway ever so slightly and framing her in ghostly swaths of ivory night, comforting in both their familiarity and incapacity to judge.

She's unable to find sleep again. How many nights does that make this, now? Having snuck away under the cover of darkness, in the deadened hours of the night, her gossamer gown drawn tight around her shoulders like the threadbare cloak of a nameless drifter. Her bare toes can just barely be seen, peeking out beneath the folds of her skirt, starkly pale against the scarlet carpet, recalling to our minds that, mature as she may have become on the surface, in many ways our princess is still but a child.

She's kneeling, but from her posture you'd be forgiven for thinking she'd collapsed there on the floor; her shoulders sag, her golden hair, unbound and unadorned, cascades down in messy, cross-hatched waves, her expression shockingly vulnerable and frail.

Before her, high on the opposite wall, hangs an old painting. Unremarkable to most, it is but one of many that decorate the weathered stone walls of the ancient castle in which she lives. Yet to her it is nothing short of captivating, just as it always has been since the days of her youth. And once more she's prostrated herself before it, a weary pilgrim seeking sanctuary.

A solitary shaft of moonlight trickles down from one of the myriad windows in this forgotten hallway, dripping diagonally across the painting, bathing its subjects in a radiant splash of light. There are other paintings in the hallway, obscured in the perpetual gloom of the night, but our subject pays them no mind. She has studied them all for years, now, ingrained their images so deeply into her subconscious that she can recall each and every one of them with perfect accuracy, down to the meanest detail, through no greater effort than merely closing her eyes.

These paintings have become like old friends to her, familial splotches of color that decorate the otherwise all-consuming torpid greys of the castle walls. She's lost track of the number of times she's wandered the halls, studying their faces, giving them names. Yet even still, night after night, it is this painting in particular that calls to her, this painting alone lures her away from the warmth and comfort of her opulent bedchambers to stalk the silent halls in sovereign solitude.

The image captured within is a simple one: The Hero of Legend stands in the center, his expression at once conflictingly stoic and tender. Swathed in green, he stands between the languid tangles of an elderly willow tree, his sword sleeping peacefully within the sheath on his back.

There is a gentleness in his countenance that belies the legends of his profound strength and indomitable will, one that speaks of a time removed from war, of a Hero who has long-since driven the darkness away and who now knows nothing but peace.

Before him stands the princess.

Not our princess, mind. One of her ancestors. A legendary woman from a time out of mind, for whom our princess is named.

In the painting, the familiarity she displays with her Hero is almost enough to make the viewer turn their head in shame; her hands are pressed passionately against the Hero's chest, fingers splaying towards his collarbone, and though her face is hidden from view, from the angle of her head it is obvious to the viewer that she is gazing with earnest adoration into the Hero's face. The kindness in his eyes is given meaning.

Together they stand, embracing, the Hero's arms wound possessively around the princess's waist, united between the willow's branches. The scenery around them is beautifully rendered, but it's obvious that the subjects of the painting have eyes only for each other, and it is only the two who upon whom our princess focuses. Only the two that tickle her imagination. Only the two that call out to her night after night after endless night.

Her eyes caress the faded contours of the artist's brush strokes. One cannot help but wonder what she is thinking. What thoughts remain locked away behind those silent, unhappy eyes?

Perhaps she is recalling her loneliness. Years of isolation within the castle, an entire adolescence spent without friend or family by her side to lighten her face with smiles and laughter, to fill the silent, spacious halls with the sound of inviting voices. No one but the castle staff, maids and guards and cooks, all of them too old to bother spending time with our little princess.

Perhaps her thoughts idle instead on her ancestors; on the princess within the painting, the royal bloodline that they share and Hyrule's history of heroes and princesses and the ceaseless, repetitive cycle of their battle against evil.

There is something different about this night. Something that makes it stand apart from every night before. Something you can almost see in the sunken angle of her shoulders, in the dejected way her hands lay discarded absently in her lap, in the weighted, unasked and unanswered questions that tremble behind dark, searching eyes. Whatever it is, it is clear she finds no solace here. No answers hidden amongst the faded pastels. No comfort in the darkness. The childlike wonder she once found within the frame is gone.

This is the first time, you see, that our princess has gazed into the face of the Hero of Legend from the painting and not seen a stranger. Instead, when she looks now into his face, she sees him. She sees her Hero.

Her Hero. Possessive.

Everything had changed after the attack.

It had all happened so fast. In a fleeting instant, in the span of a breath, all her childhood fantasies, her naïve fairytales, of adventures and heroes and promised destinies, of a life's purpose finally, _finally_ , fulfilled, had come true. A dark wizard from a parallel world invaded her country. He attacked her countrymen, held her captive, and nearly destroyed the world.

You can imagine how she must have felt in that moment. When the world had turned upside down and her dreams had dissolved into nightmarish reality. Fairytales, she'd undoubtedly learned, are much more pleasant when you are dreaming about them from the safety of your home and not living them out for yourself. Adventures are less about feats of heroism and earning praise and attention as they are extended tests of endurance, of suffering and waiting and struggling to keep it together when everything around you threatens to fall apart.

But then, perhaps our princess found that she excelled at such things. Waiting, after all, is something she's grown accustomed to. And she is no stranger to the quiet and the dark.

Finally, however, it had happened. Somehow, impossibly, just like in the stories, just like she'd always dreamed… a Hero had arrived to save her.

He was everything she'd ever imagined he'd be; kind, compassionate, courageous, considerate. Cool in the face of danger. Ready without question to fight on her behalf, to save her people, to save her.

Can you picture for a moment how she must have felt, seeing him for the first time? There, right in front of her, the boy from her dreams. The boy she had been waiting for, the boy from the stories, the princess's constant companion. Someone whom the stars themselves had decreed was meant especially for her. To work alongside and support her. To help her change her world.

The person she had hoped beyond hope for countless lonely nights that she might one day get to meet. Someone who could be her friend. Someone who would deliver her from her loneliness. And, if the painting in the hallway was anything to go by, then, perhaps someday, maybe something… more…?

Yet when all was said and done… in the end, nothing had changed.

At least, not for her.

Hyrule was rescued. The villain was slain. The Sages were saved. The Hero went home and continued to live is life in the way that he had always known.

And our princess did the same.

Everything, back to the way it had always been.

She'd wanted to scream.

Now here she sits, staring at the very same painting that had once so enamored her, filling her dreams with yearning for a future that might one day come to be, a future that very nearly had, and instead finds herself betrayed.

Where was the happiness she'd thought she'd one day win for herself?

Where was the friendship, the companionship she'd so long yearned for?

Where was her moment beneath the willow?

Try as she might, she could not bring herself to blame him. Her Hero was under no obligation to throw his life away to stay by her side. He was, after all, not a character from a story or a vision from a dream, but a person. He had dreams of his own, friends and a family, a life that existed outside of her and the will of the gods and the destiny of the Hero. She couldn't expect him to give it all up for her sake.

Yet, she could always ask… If she could but bring herself to try, if she could work up the courage to make the first move herself, to extend the hand, to give up on her years of endless, fruitless, pointless waiting and take her future into her own hands for once… but the fear within her breast was paralyzing.

She saw him from time to time, whenever he'd make a delivery to the castle. He was always quick with a warm smile and a bow, always inquiring after her well-being, but never pushing the bounds of social niceties, never giving any indication that he might want to lessen the gap between them.

He was friendly, but he was not her friend. Not personally, anyway. Not in the way she secretly yearned for. And though she struggled whenever their paths crossed to find some way to express the confusing tangle of desires and fears and yearnings that weighed down on her heart, she never found the courage to do so. She feared what he might think of her. Feared that he might turn her down. Feared that she would lose the fantasy, the only comfort she'd ever known.

Ultimately, the princess and Hero remain as they always have been.

Polite. Congenial.

Estranged.

This is the agony that keeps our princess returning to the painting from her childhood, night after night. Seeking strength. Seeking guidance. Seeking help.

But the darkness holds no answers for her.

The hour will eventually grow late. The time will come to return to her bedchambers. Time to climb beneath her layers of luxurious quilts and satin bedsheets and drift away into a sleep now devoid of premonitions, yet still somehow filled with images of boys and swords and secret interludes she knows now may very well never come to be.

In a few hours' time, another glorious morning awaits her. A morning filled with peace and prosperity. The beginnings, as we now know, of what will one day be called a Golden Age for Hyrule. She ought to be happy. She ought to be delighted and proud of all that she has managed to accomplish at her young age, all alone, with everything stacked against her.

Instead, she lingers for just a little longer, focusing intently upon the painting before her. Upon the image that has for so long danced in the back of her imagination, filling her dreams with pleasant thoughts and vain hopes for the future, holding at bay the cold reality of lonely meals and chilly corridors and a bed that is far too large for her alone.

Perhaps, ultimately, she has set herself up for this disappointment. Perhaps, at the end of the day, had she never found this painting, she would not now be experiencing this misplaced disquiet in her heart.

Perhaps if she'd never been given reason to dream of anything more, she'd never have known she wanted for it.

But then, perhaps there was never any truth to this picture at all. The person who had commissioned this particular painting had likely never met the previous Hero or Princess. It was possible, then, that just like now, her ancestor had been nothing more than a stranger to him. That there had never been anything more between them than obligation and destiny and an unvoiced, unexplained yearning. The story she has cherished since her days as a child may very well have been entirely constructed upon a lie.

Lie or not, however, there is one question in particular that can be clearly seen etched across her face.

What will we say of her?

We, who know her story. One day, when all is said and done, when her name has passed away into the history books alongside her ancestors. What will be left behind? How will we choose to immortalize her legacy?

For her posterity. Strung up somewhere in a lonely corridor, for her granddaughter's granddaughter's granddaughter to one day stumble across as she roams the castle halls, to one day fill her dreams with visions and fairytales of her own, her only companions for an endless procession of cold and lonely nights?

What will remain? There, stuck to the wall beside an image of a Hero and Princess more blessed than she. A lonely painting, encapsulating for eternity the one repetitive scene that has come to define who she is by what she longed for, by what she lacked.

A shadowy canvas, obscured in swaths of oily blacks and murky browns. A single figure, dressed in a thin nightgown, sitting alone in the moonlight.

A portrait of a moment.

* * *

 _I feel like I'm going to get some negativity for this one._

 _I know, I know... of the seven (I think?) short-stories I've posted thus far, four of them have been rather... let's say 'negative'. I've even gotten a review or two in which I was assumed to be anti Zelda/Link. Let me assure you all, that is absolutely not the case. Even in games where I don't think they're likely to get together (like in TP or OoT), I still ship them hard because I'm weird like that. But the point of this short-story collection isn't what I want to see, it's how I think it probably went down, and like it or not, the vast majority of Zelda games not only don't confirm romantic feelings, a lot of them don't show any at all, so for the sake of not being boring, I try to write as many sad stories as I do happy ones._

 _That being said, ALBW is an interesting case; while Zelda herself gets little screen time and has basically no personality outside of 'pretty princess who needs to be rescued', we are given one fascinating bit of character establishment for her from a random missable conversation with an NPC called 'The Rumor Guy', about how rumor says that Zelda sneaks away every night to stare at a painting of a past Hero and Princess embracing. I love that random little bit of info, the pathos contained within that sentence is amazing, especially compared to how bland the rest of her character is. I mean she's pleasant, but she's not particularly interesting. Compare ALBW's Zelda to ST Zelda (or SS Zelda, or BotW Zelda, or heck, WW/PH Zelda) and you find yourself scratching your head, wondering how a modern-day Zelda wound up so... cookie-cutter. I blame the ALttP influence. Hilda was so much cooler._

 _Anyway, that's where this story came from, that little comment from 'The Rumor Guy'. This time around, I'm acknowledging Zelda potentially having feelings for Link, but I didn't really comment on how he feels. Though the overall tone of the story was supposed to be melancholic, I tried to leave it open to change- but the impetus for said change, at least in terms of this one-shot, falls to Zelda. She lacks agency in most games, and I wanted to leave things in her hands rather than have Link just show up and whisk her off of her feet because 'Hero'. Whether she manages to get over herself and approach Link, however, I will leave up to you._

 _Which brings me to my next point: many of these last stories I have to write leave basically everything up to interpretation when it comes not only to Link and Zelda's relationship, but also to their characters and the worlds they live in. So for these stories, I chose to intentionally mix them up rather than shoehorning in all happy or sad endings, just for the sake of diversity. So whenever I get to the LoZ/AoL story, the ALttP/Oracles/LA story (yes, those are two stories split between 6 games; they have only 2 Links after all), and the 4SA story, don't expect me to make them happy just because I technically can. Some of them will be, some of them won't be, and you'll just have to wait and see how I split them up. Diversity is the spice of life (and I... kind of like writing sad things.)_

 _Of course, the next two stories on the docket are BotW and ST... and as those two games have probably the best examples of well-defined characters and relationships of our favorite Princess and Hero (other than SS), you can all probably guess what sort of tone they'll wind up having. So if you prefer my happier, more positive stories, you're in luck, because the next two are definitely that._

 _Anyway. Long AN is long. I... have a lot of homework I'm supposed to be doing right now, so..._

 _Keep it Zesty._

 _ZC_


End file.
